Not all that glitters is gold... sometimes it's silvers!

The next day we left Seward early in the morning and headed to our next scheduled activity. This included a flight to the mainland for combination salmon fishing and bear viewing. We had to get to a little town about an hour and a half outside of Homer on the Sterling highway called Soldotna. Our flight went out at noon and we got to town with plenty of time to spare thanks to our

6a.m. wake up call from Russ. Along the way was the first time I noticed a common trend that had developed between Russ and Katie; they both love to sleep whenever they can, especially while I drive. Each morning so far that I have taken the wheel (every morning) its the same thing, within 15 minutes they are both out and its just me and the road again. I am not complaining at all, in fact I get a lot of enjoyment out of messing with them while they are passed out. Its a pretty funny sight to see them nodding off and I have began taking pictures of the 2 of them together whenever I can. By the end of the week, I will have quite a collection. Anyway we made it to Soldotna and had a makeshift lunch of beer, cheese, sausage, and crackers before we took off for our day of fishing. We met the pilot, our guide, and another group who were flying out with us at the dock. The other group was 4 older men who had been coming fishing to this place for at least 4 years now. They were from Maine and all pretty good guys, loud mouthed, and full of one-liners. One old guy especially kept talking about how crazy the flight was going to be, how the pilots were mental, and how he had worn 3 pairs of underwear just for the flight. We boarded our float plane assuming this guy was just an old talker who had flown through a storm one time and didn't really like flying. We took flight and flew from the Kenai peninsula across the Cook Inlet to a lake inside the Lake Clark Park and Wilderness Area. We got off the float plane into our boat and bade farewell to our friends from Maine, at least for now. As soon as we stepped out of the plane

you couldn't help but be taken aback by the scenery. The words "splendid isolation" came to mind as our boat motored down the lake and our plane took off not scheduled to return for

another 6 hours. We made our way to a little corner of the lake which seemed to be our guides favorite spot. Its name was Avalanche Creek and apparently it is renowned for being an excellent spot to view the coastal brown bears that inhabit the area. This is due to the fact that there are literally thousands of salmon that flock there in the spring to climb the river and spawn. We arrived too late in the season to witness this taking place and thus there were also no bears to view either. We still tried our hand at fishing here since you could simply look over the side of the boat and see fish everywhere you looked. However, to our dismay, we dropped in our hooks, baited with salmon spawn, and watched as fish after fish just passed it up. They simply weren't biting. I had my doubts about our guides method and thought that casting lures would have proven a better option since we had talked to a group who just left the area and thats what they said was

working. Our guide Denny had faith in the spawn though, just not the location. We quickly moved around the bend and tried our luck again. Within 10 minutes we had all gotten

bites and Katie had landed the first fish. It took me about 4 missed fish to get the timing down with setting the hook, but as soon as I got it down, I didn't miss a fish the rest of the day. By the end of the day we were all old pro's and we had our limit with 2 hours to spare. It was some of the most fun I have ever had fishing. We were catching silvers (coho salmon) and they fight, as our well-spoken friend from Maine would say "like tha devil were in 'em" and it was true. Once you got them on the hook, they were jumping up in the air and

leading you all over the boat. They didn't take to long to real in and we only had about half of them run with the line, but still it was a wild time. Add that to the amazing setting and an overcast day and you couldn't ask for more. After we reached our limit, we caught one more fish to cook

up and eat out on the lake, then we went hunting for bears. We drove around the lake for about a half hour, going to all of our guides hot spots and though we got great views of waterfalls and even spotted a porcupine, there was not a bear in sight. After we ate our well deserved meal, we headed back to the area our plane would pick us up at and waited for their arrival. When they landed we climbed

back in and met our old buddies from Maine. They had fared considerably worse than we did and only ended up catching 4 fish between the 4 of them but perhaps not surprisingly, that is not what they were talking about when we got in the plane. Apparently on the flight to pick us up they had seen 2 bears as well as a number of moose!!! We were pretty excited to hear this and hoped that the pilot would be taking us to see some wildlife as well. As we started to go into the air, we noticed a nervous look from the talkative guy and watched him cross himself over and over. We would soon find out why he needed those 3 pair of extra underwear. The pilot took us on a half hour long roller-coaster ride in which we flew over 4 bears and 3 moose, one of them a giant bull moose with an amazing set of antlers, and not to mention a flight up Double Glacier with stunning views of the ice fields. We took turns at 90 degree angles on every other turn, dropped altitude so fast you could feel the butterflies in your stomach, and chased down the animals, sometimes so close that you could see their eyes. It was nuts and hands down one of the most fun moments in my life. The best part about it was that there was no warning. We had no idea that we would do any of the sight seeing let alone the acrobatics. We thought that we were just on our little commuter flight back to the Kenai, but boy were we in for a treat. As Katie described it, "it was a roller-coaster that just didn't stop!" It was great and really the icing on an already amazing cake of a day. Once we finally landed we took our fish to the processing plant and found out that we had caught 32 lbs of fillets between the 3 of us! We were thrilled and couldn't believe our luck. We got back in the car and headed for Homer, not knowing that our catch today was only the tip of a much bigger iceberg.